How to play guitar like Brian May

Steal soloing riches from the Queen guitarist

Brian May is one of the more nimble-fingered guitarists to emerge from the 70s, and he has a razor-sharp understanding of harmony and melody.

Here, we're looking at his lead style, which draws from blues, metal, classical and even trad-jazz. TG's licks cover a bunch of different techniques. The first reveals Brian's metal side, with single-string tapping similar to that used in One Vision. His accurate and focused alternate picking is all the more impressive considering he uses a coin as a pick.

Brian is also well known for his scalar picking approach, as heard in tracks such as A Kind Of Magic, and for his soulful melodic sense, as in Bijou and Who Wants To Live Forever, all delivered with emotive vibrato and pitch-perfect string-bending.

Finally, we're looking at Brian's use of delay and his amazing trad-jazz and Dixieland-inspired arrangements.

1. Tapped lick

Play the initial bends with your first and third fingers using alternate picking, then move your picking hand into position to tap the 17th fret with your middle finger. This means that you can keep hold of your pick/sixpence. The descending notes are from the E blues scale, so this lick should work over most E-based rock riffs.

5. Sequenced rock lick

6. Melodic lick

Brian was a skilful studio engineer, and he pushed the recording studios of the 70s to the limit with his heavily arranged, layered sections. Inspired by The Millionaire Waltz, the trickiest parts of this melody are triplet arpeggios. Alternate picking as you cross strings is tough, especially at the high speed of these tricky triplets, so sweep-pick instead.